Text by Ian Hall Photos by Emran Taib, Melissa Cornejo and Ian Hall See original post on Wild Asia's RTA blog. Responsible tourism at its best can allow us to trial a lifestyle that may counter the ecological crisis and bring us closer to nature. At Nikoi Island in Indonesia guests are separated from their air conditioning and consumer gadgets and provided instead with a low-energy beach front house without walls. The luxury here is to be able to smell the sea from your room, to be able to hear the insects as you sleep and enjoy...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and carbon credits sound like a good idea but I’m not sure how much they benefit rainforest conservation. Behind my suspicion lies a concept that I have been aware of for a while but only recently learned that it has a name – ‘additionality’. It’s a new jargon term which hasn’t yet made it into the dictionary. In understanding what it means I was lucky to meet a chap called Mike Packer who patiently and concisely explained things to me. Mike is the founder of a company called...

On 17th December, the European Parliament is due to vote on two pieces of legislation, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive, each of which will lead to large-scale agrofuel expansion through long-term (2020) targets. Those laws are likely to trigger more land conversion, particularly in the global South, to grow fuel for Europe’s cars, at the expense of forests and people, climate, food and biodiversity. Rettet den Regenwald (Rainforest Rescue) is coordinating a campaign to persuade MEPs to vote...

I find myself getting deeper into the shit. I'm not sure how it happened but I have become interested in biogas collectors. This is a device used to collect the biogas (mostly methane) which is emitted when biological waste is digested by bacteria. The biogas once collected can be burned to provide cooking, lighting and carbon credits. The chemistry of burning methane in the presence of oxygen is that it produces water and CO2. Carbon dioxide is a less potent greenhouse gas than methane so that's how we can earn carbon credits. The...

I was asked recently by a friend of a friend to comment on the practicality of building a carbon neutral office tower. Without knowing any better, I bravely suggested that a carbon neutral office tower was not yet possible. The root problem I surmised is that we can’t control the source of energy delivered by the grid. Thus any would-be carbon neutral building needs to generate all of its power on site using renewables to be certain that its energy use is not causing carbon emissions. Assuming that power generation of any kind...